


An Ending

by MercuryGray



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, burial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:29:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23436970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: “She’s in the kitchen with him,” Mr. Mills said quietly. “They’re coming with the coffin soon.“ Cora Dawson nodded, and stepped inside, pausing a moment and then hanging up her coat and hat. She’d be a while.No parent should have to bury their child - but here they are. Mrs. Dawson has come to help Mrs. Mills dress a body.
Kudos: 8





	An Ending

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Triptych](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13192953) by [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray). 



> Done for a prompt on tumblr - Mrs. Dawson + an ending.

It was strange to her, seeing a man answering a door.

She’d come expecting to see Mabel, as she always saw Mabel, but it was Bob who answered her knock, a hangdog, tired look about him, and she remembered, soberingly, why she had come.

“She’s in the kitchen with him,” Mr. Mills said quietly. “They’re coming with the coffin soon.“ 

Cora Dawson nodded, and stepped inside, pausing a moment, and then hanging up her coat and hat. She’d be a while. She felt a hand on her arm - Mr. Mills had caught her wrist.

“I’m glad it’s you that’s come,” he said quietly. She didn’t know what to say, and so nodded, thin-lipped, wondering why he should be glad. _My son came home._

_One son, anyway._

_…Oh._

The kitchen window faced north, and though it was sunny outside, the light was poor and distant. No one had thought to turn on the electrics, and so Mabel Mills was sitting, in the dark, with the body of her boy on the scrubbed surface of her kitchen table. Cora’s hand briefly touched the switch, and reconsidered; somehow a light did not seem appropriate. Both mother and child were ghostly, Mabel’s hand a pale flash against her son’s dark hair.

“They wanted to take him to hospital,” she said, empty-eyed. “But I wouldn’t let them. He ought to be buried from home, I said. Ought to be with his family.” She smoothed his hair again, pressing her fingers against his cheek as though he were her baby again, in need of soothing. Cora watched Mabel’s hands and thought of David’s hair, and Peter’s, like white swansdown, and the softness of baby skin, and the warm, sweet smell of them, until she took a breath to keep the tears from needling at her eyes and suddenly it was all coolness and damp from the dark kitchen again.

George looked so pitiful, lying there in his knitted vest with his sleeves pushed to the elbows. One of the tails of his shirt was loose, and the bandage from around his head had come undone, leaving a dark, matted cowlick in his hair. Unkempt, unmanaged - a child, still. (She remembered going to sit in David’s room, after, and found his teddy in a drawer, an airplane model on his dresser. When did they stop being boys and start being men?)

Cora looked around and spotted the kettle on the stove, the wash pannikin and the length of toweling, the Sunday suit folded on the chair. _They’re coming with the coffin soon._

Mabel watched her as she moved towards the stove. “What are you doing?”

“You’ll want to wash him,” Cora said, fiddling with the gas until it caught.

“He’s dead, Cora.” The grieving woman looked at her as though she’d gone soft in the head, her hand still light on George’s hair. “He can’t feel it.” The plainness of her speech cut like a knife to bone, and Cora’s hand tightened on the kettle, steadying herself over the stove.

“He’s your baby,” she said plainly, thinking of Peter, who had come home with this same smell of gasoline on him, of David, who had had no bath, no graveclothes, no grave. “ _You’d_ feel it.”


End file.
